Passion, Life and Work - World as a Family


From last couple of weeks I have been conducting a survey of social media salaries that Indian professionals are getting. This is an in-house effort by my company just to shed some light over the matter cause me and some friends in the industry used to wonder about it. Instead of pushing it too much openly over here on the blog or Twitter, I chose to message people individually on Linkedin. This way I thought the results would be lot more qualitative as I would be messaging only social media profiles. Another advantage I felt was that it might lead to dialogue between various social media folk, which did happen. I replied to almost everyone who wrote back to me.

Along with the good stuff however there was some backfire, due to the fact that it is actually not possible to keep track of who I have already messaged and who I have recently come across. (It is possible but very tedious) It so happened that couple of them got the message multiple times, while one of them nicely replied back and I apologised and explained to them why it might have happened. This other person just called me a Spammer and threatened to remove me from their contact list. I removed them from my contact list, as anyway that person was not adding any value being there cause he couldn't even word his messages well!

His comments however got me thinking....
Work can be done to the degree of professionalism where every little detail is in place, however tedious we would take the road which would lead to no mistakes. Probably a very "Safe" path. Sure it might have taken more time if I had to cross check before I messaged anyone but at least there wouldn't be a repeat.

Now the thing is that I need to at this point re-visit why "I" was doing the social media survey in the first place. I could have hired someone and got them to do the messaging (its nothing too difficult) but I was doing it cause I like doing stuff on my own. I did take help from someone for a while but the answer is that I am really passionate about these things.

So the problem that comes up is that mistakes do happen. Many a times they are unavoidable. If I got scared of them, I would have to work like a computer and I would not be able to put my soul into my work. My passion, my love for the work I am doing is the drive not some 'Safety' rules and procedures.

Another example, is my Happenings newsletter. This newsletter started as an expression to communicate with friends, family and even some not so close friends. What happens is that a lot of them are not tech savvy enough so I can't ask them to subscribe to my newsletter but they would read my emails. So when I started my newsletter I scanned through my entire email database where there are a lot of people... I ticked all my relatives, friends and even some with whom I had lost contact but I wanted them to read these letters from me.

Now the thing here is that since I had not 'technically' asked them to sign up for the newsletter some idiot could call it spamming. The thing is that if I listened to these people, whether they are right or wrong, I would not be able to work with passion and 'रूचि'

At some point I think everyone needs to ask themselves Do I have passion for what I am doing? And if I really feel for it just go ahead and do it. If in the process someone who is not interested in my life gets the newsletter or if a social media professional gets the same message multiple times they need to have the grace to just unsubscribe or just let me know politely. This applies to me too when someone else goofs up... and it is something that I have been experiencing in my life. Small things can get us really riled up against some act another person has done and we start judging them saying 'they spammed' or 'they are rude'. Via social media it becomes so easy to just 'unfriend' these people or block them or bash them on a blog.

What I feel is that this is part of a bigger problem that we as Humans have. We create a small circle of friends and family and then we close ourselves to others. we perceive relatives as completely different from the way we see another person on the road. Why is this? The fact is that even in close families often you don't Know (beyond routine likes & dislikes) most relative any better than you can know a stranger on the road. Taking the example of an extreme situation - sometimes when there is a case where a family member has indulged in paedophilia - if you have read cases you will find the family is very reluctant to even believe the child of the same family who has made the claim. If the accused were to be outside the family these people would pick up stones to hit him! Why this difference?

Another example I just read today in Robinson Crusoe - It seems RC was taken as a slave by some turks, he found that really distasteful and ran away. He obviously saw that as great injustice but then in the same book, RC himself is completely comfortable with taking African slaves!!

So I think, we Humans as a whole need to calm down, sit and think about stuff. We need to see people as part of our family, and I mean all People. Albeit an extended family, but I do not think there is any other way to achieve true peace and a loving world..........And if you know your family you will know that they are never 'Perfect'!

pic source: www.call4peace.com

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